Actions Quotes Logo
Quote Image

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

~ William H. Gass ~

Actions Quotes Logo
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound
Switch quote backgound

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granari...

Show More
Picture of William H. Gass
William H. GassReading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation

More William H. Gass quotes

"

In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it i...

"

Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that mad...

"

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is ...

"

So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or...

"

Language is not the lowborn, gawky servant of thought and feeling; it is need, thought, feeling, and perception itself. The shape of sentences, the so...

"

If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because...

"

The responsibility of any science, any pure pursuit, is ultimately to itself, and on this point physics, philosophy, and poetry unite with Satan in th...